McDonald’s Serves up Social Media

McDonald’s is the world’s largest and fastest growing food service organisation. It is also a brand that attracts a lot of discussion and debate online. Not all of it positive.

This presentation from Heather Oldani, their Director of PR, is a great overview of how McDonald’s is using social media and online communities. From Twitter and Facebook to their own online communities.

It’s an interesting insight into how a brand like McDonald’s is using social media – what they set out to achieve and what actually happened. But the presentation is Required Reading this week at FreshNetworks for the five key learnings that Oldani outlines from McDonald’s experiences:

1. Don’t ask “Should we engage using social media?”; ask how you should engage
2. Get your strategy right before you start using social media – know what you’re trying to achieve
3. Collaborate across the business – social media impacts on a range of different teams and job roles and often leads to these teams having to work together in different and new ways
4. Be flexible and try new things
5. Be open and responsive to feedback – listen to what people say (positive or negative) and respond or engage if appropriate

For us, the most important of these is number 2 – getting a clear strategy before you start to use social media is critical for any brand. If you don’t know why you’re doing it, consumers won’t either.